After Billy Wilder set the gold standard for film noir with his 1944 masterpiece Double Indemnity, he wasted no time deconstructing the genre. Just six years later, he subverted the formula he helped to create. With 1950’s Sunset Boulevard, Wilder brought the noir to Tinseltown, injected it with a hefty dose of pitch-black comedy, swapped out a brooding detective for a brooding screenwriter, and used shadowy, expressionistic imagery to bid a bitter farewell to the silent era.

While hiding from his creditors at a seemingly abandoned mansion, down-on-his-luck B-picture scribe Joe Gillis (William Holden) is surprised to find the derelict old house is occupied by none other than washed-up silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Norma is planning a big Hollywood comeback, and since Gillis is strapped for cash, he agrees to help her with the script. However, as she slips deeper into her unrealistic fantasies and becomes dangerously obsessed with him, he comes to realize he might be in over his head.

Sunset Boulevard was way ahead of the curve in critiquing Hollywood’s misogynistic tendency to discard women of a certain age. The same subject matter was tackled by All About Eve in the same year, but Sunset Boulevard approaches that subject with a delightfully dark sense of humor. Similar to The Substance, it uses a twisted psychological horror to capture the ruthlessness of Hollywood’s rejection.

Gloria Swanson Anchors Sunset Boulevard With A Truly Iconic Performance

William Holden Provides A Great Foil, Too

Holden nails the snappy dialogue, the hard-boiled voiceovers, and the grizzled gravitas of a self-mythologizing has-been writer, and Erich von Stroheim gives a great supporting turn as Norma’s unfailingly loyal butler, Max. But Swanson is the undeniable star of the movie, delivering a truly iconic performance as Norma. Her biting wit, disturbing delusions, and underlying tragedy make her an endlessly captivating character. She’s unsettling, but she’s also oddly lovable, and Swanson manages that balance perfectly.

For a movie that openly rails against dialogue and argues that it’s not necessary to tell a story onscreen, Sunset Boulevard’s script — co-written by Wilder, frequent collaborator Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman, Jr. — is full of fantastic lines. Norma gets all the best lines, and Swanson nails the delivery of every single one: “I am big; it’s the pictures that got small.” Ironically, the line that criticizes dialogue is, itself, a great line that makes a case for dialogue’s crucial function: “We didn’t need dialogue; we had faces!”

Sunset Boulevard Is Bookended By An Iconic Opening & An Equally Iconic Finale

Beginnings & Endings Are The Toughest Parts Of A Movie To Get Right

Half the challenge of making a great movie is coming up with a great opening and a great ending, and Sunset Boulevard has both one of the most iconic openings in film history and one of the most iconic endings. It opens with a body floating in a pool, and a voiceover narration from the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ man telling the story of how he got there. This opening image hooks you instantly. It leaves you with a ton of unanswered questions, sets up an inevitable tragedy, and creates an air of mystery around the story that follows.

Sunset Boulevard’s final scene is just as iconic; it’s an unforgettable moment, and a pitch-perfect culmination of the narrative journey Norma has taken us on. The film’s closing moments play into Norma’s deranged fantasy world to catch her out — even the police play along. “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup,” is one of the most memorable final lines ever written. It shows just how far gone Norma is. She’s fully detached from reality; she’s fully embraced her delusions. As she’s being arrested, she genuinely believes she’s shooting a film. It’s a chilling note to end on.

Most movies about the film industry, from Ed Wood to Bowfinger to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, are an affectionate love letter to the glitz and glamor of the silver screen. But what makes Sunset Boulevard the quintessential movie about Hollywood is that it’s more of a slam piece. Like Barton Fink and The Player, Sunset Boulevard emphasizes the horrors of Hollywood. It doesn’t romanticize the cutthroat movie business; it laments the way movie stars get chewed up and spit out by a corrupt system that commodifies human beings.